Miles To Go
by Hickumu
Summary: Sequel to "Better This Way", post GoTG. It didn't come easily, but Nebula has found herself free of Thanos. She has all the universe at her disposal, but spite is a powerful force, and so she's decided to spend her newfound freedom making her former master's life a misery. Keeping the remaining Infinity Gems far out of his reach seems a logical place to start, starting with Asgard.


So, it turned out that there were some advantages to being the least favorite child.

One of those, in particular, was that Thanos would focus more time and energy on killing her sister than he would on her. Honestly, Nebula sometimes got the impressions that the bounty hunters and assassins sent after her were formalities, more than anything. Thanos couldn't be seen suffering a wayward agent to live, but neither were his resources limitless, and the self-styled "Guardians of the Galaxy" were infinitely more annoying.

On that account, Nebula could even sympathize with her father. In the meantime, she'd never been one to let an opportunity pass by. And between her sister and her father, well, Nebula would always hate Gamora least. So she let Gamora and her new friends draw the fire, and went to work on her own.

Thanos wanted the Infinity Gems and the gauntlet that housed them more than almost anything in the universe. Without them, he was still a destructive force that commanded a galaxy of his own, but he wasn't yet powerful enough to raze half the universe into stardust. All in all, this was a preferable state of affairs to maintain for as long as possible. So as soon as she had reassured herself that she had escaped, really escaped – and it took longer than Nebula would ever have liked to admit to do that – she went to work.

The Orb was accounted for. Nebula knew of few places safer than the Nova Corps headquarters, and there was nowhere she would prefer to break into less than there. So she was content to leave it there, for now. On the other hand, the Aether was unaccounted for, after the explosion that had ravaged the Collector's collection. Nebula thought it would be best to wait for Tivan's fury to cool before pursuing any leads on that front, however, lest she find herself "recruited" into replenishing his stock.

There was, however, at least one Gem that she knew Thanos did not have, but knew where it was. One Gem where Nebula felt fairly confident she could get it away and hide it elsewhere before that happened.

So her path took her to Asgard, self-styled Golden City and Realm Eternal. Loki had died trying to get away with the Tesseract. At the least, that meant she could avoid making all the same mistakes.

She went disguised, of course. What research and information Nebula had been able to gather told her that while Asgard was not entirely unaware of worlds and species existing outside its own system, it was generally leery of them. She had also been warned, by Loki himself, that they had an unparalleled surveillance system, capable of monitoring activity on multiple planets.

Still, upon making her hasty exit from Thanos and Ronan both, Nebula had managed to bring along some very nice toys. Included among them were a couple of different cloaking devices, not including the one in her stolen ship. It was Nova Corps standard issue, surely more than enough to slip past whatever defenses Asgard might muster. From there, as long as she landed in an isolated location, kept at least half an eye on the guard's patterns, made a few well-placed bribes…well, she'd certainly executed more difficult infiltrations with less.

At least, that had been the plan.

That plan had landed her inside a cell in the bowels of the castle before she'd even made it to the infamous Vault. She'd managed to kill or incapacitate a good half a dozen guards in the meantime, but there had been too many in the end and she'd been cornered with no easy way out that wouldn't have involved going through the wall. The end result of the entire sad affair had been Nebula, stripped of any equipment that could be stripped from her and thrown into a cell surrounded by four walls that looked like little more than transparent crystal, and soon proved to be harder that titanium alloy. When the guards had a mind to make it so, such as when they saw her trying to break through anyway, those walls could also be electrified. However it was electrified, it just so happened to play flarking hell with all her enhancements.

Wonderful.

After all of that, the news that the "All-Father" - almost every world had its own word for "King" - would be coming to see her almost seemed like the logical next step of a complete disaster. Nebula could only settle down in the furthest corner of her cell from the guards and try to think how she could best turn the misfortune to her advantage.

For all that she was glad to be away from Thanos, a fair few of his lessons had still and were still proving useful to her survival alone in the universe. Nebula tried not to think too much about that, even if it sometimes required heavy drinking to accomplish.

It wasn't just a piercing awareness of how precarious her situation was that kept Nebula from wanting to meet the All-Father of Asgard, however. For the first time in too long, really - since before Gamora had fled - Nebula found her thoughts turning to her other "sibling". Loki had been perhaps her greatest mistake, and a betrayal she still felt keenly. For all that he'd been a part of their ragtag family the shortest amount of time, he'd also had the most to leave behind. He'd had a home he could talk about without the knowledge that it had been razed to the ground behind him, a family that had even tried to find him. Or at least, he'd had a mother who had tried to find him, and a brother who he couldn't help recalling with a strange, sad sort of fondness.

Nebula had heard far less of the man who had been Loki's father. In fact, she'd only heard his name once or twice, offhanded and bitter. That had still been enough to gather that Loki thought about as much of the father who had seen him cast into the dark as he did of the father who had pulled him out of it. More to the point, it was still clear enough that this had been a comment against Odin's quality as a father, rather than a comment in favor of Thanos'.

Needless to say, she found herself with a great deal she wanted to say to this man, whoever he was. She was also piercingly aware that this was neither the time nor the place. _Focus on the mission. Turn misfortune to your advantage_.

It was a familiar mantra that steadied her. That, and waiting for her enhancements to calm down from the electrification, meant that Nebula felt calm once more by the time a commotion from outside her cell alerted her to Odin's arrival.

She wouldn't be seen huddled in the corner, beaten and defeated, some captured curiosity. Nebula rose instead to her feet in one fluid movement, stalking into the center of the cell to better regard her captor.

Odin was…an old man. That was really her first impression. All the robes and jewelry and ostentation couldn't conceal that fact. He was an old man who had almost certainly been a fearsome warrior, in his day. The eye-patch and even the way he held the strange spear in his hand testified to that much. Yet he was old, battered, worn. Nebula could tell that much at a glance, too, and allowed herself a moment to reflect once more on the fragility of any society built around a single man.

Just look at what had happened to Thanos in only a year or so, after all.

Odin stood on the other side of her crystalline cell wall for a long moment, merely watching, and so Nebula nevertheless felt a faint chill go down her spine, along with the very definite impression that he was seeing more than she could guess. She was still certain she could overpower this man, if she had to, if the chance arose, but as their gazes met she found herself marginally less certain that the chance might arise. Her unease only grew when he stepped forward, nearer and nearer to the cell, until she was sure he was going to collide with it and he _stepped through_ it instead. The wall rippled around him like a liquid with a stone cast into its depths, before returning to its previously unyielding state. A couple of the guards started forward as though to follow him, but Odin held up a hand without even so much as looking back.

"No need," he said simply. "I am not yet so feeble as to be unable to manage one lone stranger."

Nebula wanted to bare her teeth in protest at this, but held herself back. She even tried to stand so that she looked weak and nonthreatening, but was long out of practice if it was something that she'd ever been capable of in the first place. Either way, the guards obeyed their king, though she saw more than a few looks of misgiving being exchanged over Odin's shoulder.

She could only imagine just how much worse those looks got when Odin waved a hand almost dismissively, and the previously transparent walls turned as opaque as stone. Odin merely folded his arms behind his back, however, and regarded her with his head slightly tilted. Maybe it really was possible for family to inherit traits and habits for reasons other than blood, because when he did so she was reminded of Loki so much that it hurt.

"All-Father Odin, I presume?" Nebula asked, trying just for now to keep too much wariness or disdain out of her voice. Either she succeeded or the king would have been a staggeringly good diamondback player, if kings did that sort of thing. He only nodded, with scarcely a twitch in his expression.

"You clearly know of me. But I'm afraid I have not had the honor, for you or your employer."

Nebula, for her part, could not quite help a twitch at the mention of "employer". "Who I am doesn't matter." She offered him her most charming, most _edged_ smile. "What I can offer you…that might be something to talk about."

This time, she knew she had his attention. The signs were subtle, but there, enough that Nebula found herself picking up on them on an almost instinctual level. "And what do you think you can offer me, child?"

"Not just you. All of you, _all_ of Asgard. You have no idea what sort of danger you're inviting to your door by keeping the Tesseract _and_ that Gauntlet here in just a _Vault_. If Earth hadn't proved itself better defended than we'd planned, this entire planet might already be rubble and stardust."

"Bold words that I have heard many times before, and will doubtless here many times in future. What power do you possess that should give your threats more weight?"

"Not a threat. A promise. As for how I know…I knew a guy." Yet Nebula knew even as she said the words that they would be insufficient, wouldn't be believed. Furthermore, she didn't have time to waste arguing or pleading a case that should have otherwise been irrelevant. So instead, she took a deep breath through gritted teeth, hating the way her breath wavered traitorously, and forced herself to add: "I knew your son."

Odin's eyes widened in surprise, even to the point of taking a slight step back. It was perhaps the first proper reaction she'd seen out of him so far, and that was gratifying. It was his reasons that proved just the opposite. "You know Thor?"

King or not, captor or not, Nebula was seized with the sudden, overpowering urge to take his other eye. With a supreme effort of will, she didn't. She only gritted out: "No. I _knew_ Loki."

"Ah." She could almost _see_ him close down. "I see."

Nebula wasn't sure he did, but she forced herself to carry on anyway. She was in too deep, now. The only thing for it was to swim or drown.

"We happened to share an 'employer', not too long ago – one who's very powerful, and very dedicated to gathering all the Infinity Gems to him. Ever since the three of us parted on what you might call 'poor terms', I'm been trying to slow him down. In case Loki never mentioned it, he knows you have the Gauntlet _and_ one of the Gems. He almost doesn't have a choice but to come and take them from you." With a snort of derision, Nebula added: "Not after the year he's been having."

Even after everything, that thought set off a lovely, warm little glow in her chest before Odin spoke once more.

"And what, precisely, do you think you could do to 'slow him down', all alone?"

"My _best chance_ is 'all alone'. Quick and quiet, find the Tesseract and the Gauntlet a new hiding place somewhere very hidden and very far away. Suddenly, he's got no reason to take this world apart. Not yet, anyway."

"I am to believe that you would find somewhere 'very hidden' and 'very far away' to take it, rather than racing straight back to your master?"

"Loki really didn't tell you anything about us, did he?"

Despite herself, despite the bitterness and betrayal, Nebula felt a surge of something that might have been affection or pride for her former sibling. Then again, after surviving everything Thanos could do to break a mind down, she couldn't imagine this place conjuring anything much worse.

Odin didn't answer, of course, which really might as well have been answer enough. In fact, Nebula only realized then that there were _several_ things about this conversation that weren't really adding up, pieces out of place. In the frustrating way of things, however, she found that she couldn't look too close or too hard at those pieces, lest they slither through her fingers.

So she would just have to keep him talking in the meantime. That was fine. It wasn't her favorite trick in the world, of course, but Nebula's life so far had forced her to be very adaptable indeed. "Or did you even ask?" she continued on, with barely a beat missed as it took an instant for all of these thoughts to process. "We found him falling through space. Did you ever wonder how he got out of it? Or were you the ones to put him there in the first place? He never really talked all that much about home, you see. Not that it mattered much, to Thanos. You're just lucky he didn't, or else our former 'employer' might have come to burn this place down around you anyway just to shut him up. We were only allowed one another as family, after all." A familiar but no less unpleasantly cold shiver ran down nebula's spine as she added, voice tinged with disgust that she would perhaps never be able to entirely hide: "Thanos loved his children."

"Crossing him hardly seems to aid in the escape you claim to desire." Odin held up a hand as Nebula opened her mouth to snap back, and despite herself, Nebula found herself falling silent instead. "And you seem to greatly overestimate your own abilities, considering that all your plans only found you _here_."

This was going nowhere, and all her attempts to figure out just _what_ she was missing were so far proving maddeningly unsuccessful. Odin was right about one thing – she definitely couldn't stay here. "Funny thing about that." Nebula hadn't let herself relax _entirely_ from her aggressive stance since he'd stepped into her cell. It only took the barest shift of her weight to shift into a position that would let her _lunge_. "I might be in here…but you're in here with me."

Odin didn't so much as twitch as she leaped for him, reaching for his throat with her mechanical hand. A split-second later, Nebula understood why as she staggered right through him, the All-Father's body – _illusion –_ dissolving in a shower of green sparks.

Green.

Sparks.

Oh. _Oh_. Nebula's mind was so numb with shock that she barely registered when the force of her momentum led to her colliding painfully with her unforgivably hard cell wall. She stumbled back upright, pressing a hand to her forehead, her mind a whirl of shock and borderline _panic_.

Suddenly it all made sense. The appearance of Loki on the other side of the cell was barely a formality, at that point.

"Well. That was rather impolite."

This image faded to when she moved in hard and fast, meaning to break his jaw. It only reappeared near another wall, looking almost bored. "If that makes you feel any better, feel free to keep doing so. I assure you, I'm not feeling anything."

"_Damn_ you," Nebula snarled, rounding on him once more. Now that she could see him properly, after losing Gamora, after having the wound of his loss torn open once more only after she'd finally started to accept it, to be denied even the satisfaction of _hitting _him was enraging to the point of making her grind her teeth. "Loki, what the _hell_ are you doing? How are you alive?!"

He looked genuinely surprised, at this, or she thought he did. It was often so hard to tell, where Loki was concerned. She'd once had a talent for reading him, but who could say if she still did? "I never died." Comprehension apparently dawning, he asked: "I suppose Thanos told you otherwise?"

Nebula didn't deign to reply. What would be the point? The answer must have shown on her face plainly enough, in any case, and Loki seemed to soften. "Well. You see that's not the case."

"No. Instead, I find you running a _planet_." Nebula snorted derisively. "You always come out on top, don't you?"

"I assure you, Nebula, my aims stretch far beyond Asgard now. In fact…once again, our aims seem to align."

"Keeping the Gems away from Thanos? Then why the d'ast didn't you tell me that to start with?"

"I hardly knew at the start that was your aim. For all I knew, you really had come here to bring it back. After all, when we last saw one another, it was still in his service."

"Yeah. When we last saw one another. Before you _abandoned_ me."

The words were far more vulnerable and far more _honest_ than she wanted to be out loud. The sting was slightly dulled by the way they caused Loki to draw up short like he'd just been slapped. Silence hung between them for a long few moments, and even when it was broken, Nebula wasn't entirely certain she wasn't hallucinating.

"I'm sorry." His gaze fell to his feet, and he took a deep breath, before looking back up at her steadily once more. Nebula found herself wondering if he could only bring himself to do so because there was an illusion between the two of them. "All I can say is that I meant what I said…before. About us. After…" Here he shrugged. "Truth be told, I'm still not certain what came over me."

Nebula was. She and Gamora had both understood that the scepter he'd been "gifted" to aid in his attack on the Earth had been little more than a means for the Other to keep him on a leash. Rationally, Nebula knew that meant there was probably no blaming him for all that had happened after. Yet at the same time, he'd still accepted the damn thing. He hadn't _thought_. He'd rushed ahead, in pursuit of the power he could crave with as much fervor as Thanos himself and the acknowledgment he believed would come with it. He'd been a fool, and in the lives they'd lead that really could be a killing offense.

So she did not forgive him, not then and there. It was an effort even to grit out: "Doesn't matter", because the past was still the past and they had other, infinitely more dangerous and infinitely more preferable matters to focus their attention on. "What matters is this. I was right. You _still _have a Gem _and _the Gauntlet here, and that's _suicide_."

"You're right," Loki agreed without hesitation. "In my defense, I previously had two. But I managed to move the Aether elsewhere."

Nebula winced. That explained a few things, truth be told, but it didn't paint a remotely more pleasant picture of the situation. "Yeah, that…didn't work out so well. For anyone. No one can really account for where it is, but the Collector is...well. I suppose 'not happy' is a start."

She wondered later what the guards waiting outside the wallsfor "Odin's" verdict thought was going on. At the look of outright horror on Loki's face, Nebula had to elaborate and she had to elaborate from there on the flarking morons that Gamora had brought there in the first place and just how she'd come to leave Thanos' service. Then, of course, Loki had to elaborate - on his imprisonment, his chance for freedom, the circumstances that had led to him taking Odin's place on the throne of Asgard.

Considering that he was home, and he made mention to her that his brother was currently staying on Earth, Nebula found the careful avoidance of any mention of his mother to be.. unfortunately telling, all on its own. So she indulged his silence in that, at least, because even Nebula could only be so cruel. Some things just should not be done, some wounds should just not be torn open.

It was hard to tell time in the almost blindingly white, bright cell, but Nebula couldn't imagine it was anything less than hours.

"Anyway," she finished at long last. At some point, they'd wound up sitting side-by-side against the wall furthest from the guards. Nebula could only imagine that Loki had done something, or that there was something in the walls, to keep the guards from overhearing them. "That brings us back to now. And the immediate issue at hand."

"Yes. I suppose it does."

"I hope you realize now that keeping any two pieces together is courting massacre. More than usual."

"I hope you realize that _traveling_ with both is an invitation to every raider and agent of Thanos for a hundred thousand light years." Loki - or the illusion of Loki, she had to keep reminding herself of that, even if he'd clearly had time to practice over the course of his imprisonment - stroked his chin thoughtfully. "One, then. One to stay and one to leave. Asgard is safe enough, in any case. Or safer than most places I've found, for now."

"For now," Nebula agreed. "Then I'll take the Gauntlet."

"No. Take the Tesseract."

His answer was...remarkably emphatic, for how calm they'd been otherwise in discussing a wide variety of horrible events in the last couple of years. "If you don't trust yourself that much with it, fine," Nebula said, and took some small, spiteful, vicious satisfaction from the way that even his projection flinched.

"I don't," he admitted quietly. Gaze downcast on the floor between them, he added, in a tone of voice that told her that the words were not entirely his own. "It would consume me."

He did seem to have truly atrocious luck interacting with the Gems. From what he'd told her, Asgard had nearly been destroyed over the Aether before being lost by the Collector. The stone in his scepter, which was apparently still on Earth, had probably led indirectly to him being captured after failing in his mission in the first place. Loki was _not_ a warlord, no matter how much Thanos had needed one at the time.

Nebula did not entirely believe in luck. However. she also didn't believe in making things needlessly harder on herself. The universe was a vast, complicated thing. Who was she to buck a worryingly persistent trend?

"Well, we can't have that," was all she said out loud. "The Tesseract, then. For now."

"For now," he agreed, thankfully without hesitation this time. "No, I hold no delusions that any of our hiding places will hold forever. Thanos has time, patience, and power. Enough of that can overcome any obstacle."

"So we keep him guessing."

"We keep him moving, and dividing his forces as far as they'll go."

"We might even point him in the wrong direction, since we'll be deciding what the right one is from now on."

"And in the end, we turn his misfortune…"

"…to our advantage," they finished together, the words coming with well-honed instinct. He looked at her and she looked at him, and Nebula was sure his tired smile was mirrored on her face. It was hard, sometimes, to be reminded just how deep Thanos still had his hooks into them no matter how many galaxies they put between themselves and their former father. Yet at the same time, it was easier, even satisfying, to remember that they were at least beginning to put all their training to good use at long last.

There could be no better use then turning themselves, as Thanos' best beloved weapons, back against him. If all else failed, spite was a wonderful reason to stay alive.

"In turn, I will turn Asgard's resources to gathering the gems that are still missing," Loki continued on. "If I find any…"

"Pass them along. I'll get them out of sight."

"Excellent." Loki looked pleased, and just this once, Nebula found that she couldn't blame him. After all: "We have a plan."

"Guess we do. It's not going to mean a damn thing if I'm stuck in here, though."

"Oh." She wasn't sure whether she wanted to laugh at him or slap him for the way he'd obviously forgotten that they were sitting companionably in a prison cell. "No, I suppose it won't. Just a moment."

He stood, and as he stood, his image flickered and changed until a green shimmer in the air faded to reveal the image of Odin once more.

The guards were somewhat skeptical, to say the least, about "Odin's" sudden pronouncement that Nebula should be released, that she was even to be employed in future as an agent in his service. The apparent length of time during which they'd been talking, however, coupled with the lack of any audible sounds of a fight in the meantime, seemed to mollify them. All too quickly, Nebula found the way opened for her to step out of her cell and her gear returned. The Tesseract couldn't be handed over publicly, of course, so she merely followed the projection of Odin back to Asgard's Vault, where it was the work of a few barked commands for the guards to let them through.

"Not big on original thinking, are they?" Nebula murmured to Loki, only after the grand double doors had been closed behind them.

He let out a bark of amused laughter, even as the projection faded back to his proper appearance. "Bless their remarkably thick skulls, no. If the All-Father were to tell them the sky was green, they would swear it had always been so. How do you think I escaped notice for so long?"

"I always thought _this_," she gestured at his image, at the magic he'd used to conjure it, at the almost innate ability to show a second skin even though she knew plainly well what his real one looked like. "Probably helped." A thought occurred to her then, a potentially dangerous but no less beguiling one, prompting Nebula to ask: "Where are you? Really?"

Loki paused a few steps down, glancing curiously back at her. "In my chambers. Odin's chambers, technically, but no one ever goes in there." More than that, he had no family left that might otherwise be permitted.

"Why?" Why wasn't he here, where she could touch him, slap him, kiss him? It was only now, after truly starting to process that his loss hadn't been forever, that Nebula was coming to feel all over again just how much she'd missed being able to do all of those things.

Some of those hideously vulnerable thoughts must have shown on his face. Loki's smile was not unkind, and most importantly it was blessedly free of pity, even as he shook his head. "I fear that would not be wise. Seeing you is distracting enough, and we have other matters to attend to. " Here his gaze fell to the floor once more, with an almost sad smile. "By rights, I probably shouldn't even have shown myself at all."

He stepped aside then, motioning for her to continue down the stairs. Without thinking, Nebula did so. It was really only as an afterthought that she asked, glancing over her shoulder. "So why did you?" It was true that even wearing an image of his true form could be dangerous, if he were overheard or glimpsed at the wrong moment.

He waited until she'd turned away before answering. So many of their most important conversations had happened when one or both had their back to the other. It probably said nothing good about the two of them, but it was how things had always _worked_.

Nebula still stopped dead in her tracks at the reply he gave, in little more than a whisper that nevertheless echoed in the vast, otherwise silent Vault.

"I don't keep my promises very often. But this time…it was worth it."

Nebula remembered. _I will not ever let you go. And so that means you aren't allowed to die, doesn't it? Not until I say so. No one is allowed to kill you except me. Do you understand?_

"Oh," she breathed. At the same time, wasn't remotely surprised to find that, when she turned around, even the projection of Loki was gone.

"Damn you," she whispered, fists clenching helplessly at her sides. There were three other words she wanted to say to Loki instead, but wasn't sure if she would ever be able to.

Instead, she only gathered the Tesseract up into the containment field she'd brought along for that very purpose, and when she headed for the ship she'd left parked on a tower roof, no one stopped her. Plenty of people stared, but they'd clearly been ordered to do no more than that.

Nebula refused to stop, refused to let her steps falter, until she was safely in the pilot's seat and the ship was lifting off, higher and higher as space opened up above her. There was no time to stop. They had work to do.

Maybe, one day, it would even be over. Unlikely, perhaps, but she was learning how to hope.


End file.
